The largest science centre in Germany has opened in Heilbronn, with four permanent exhibition galleries set across 3,200sq m (34,445sq ft).

Backed by the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, a non-profit investment arm of supermarket giant Lidl, the new centre will also feature a dome theatre, an observatory and various workshop spaces. It was spawned from the original Experimenta, which closed in 2017 so that the new, expanded version could replace it.

Two of the four permanent galleries were created by Dutch experience specialist NorthernLight and the company’s co-founder and director, Steven Schaeken, told Attractions Management about the process and its thinking behind its galleries.

"We worked with around 50 people – engineers, robotics engineers, designers etc," he said.

"It’s one of the best projects I’ve worked on in my 20 years in the field. The client helped to get some of the most innovative thinking out of our heads, which was great."

The other two galleries were produced by Hüttinger and designed by Berlin company Triad and Stuttgart firm Milla and Partner respectively.

On the working relationship with those other firms, Schaeken said: "The client had a really good structure so we held various collaborative meetings to keep everyone up to speed.

"There was an overall system and graphics style set by the client – they did a lot of the research on exhibits and they had a computer-guided system to work to, so we were all aligned by that."

NorthernLight’s galleries, Nature of Things and World View, took three-and-a-half years to create. The former is based on matter and explores five elements of everyday matter – solids, liquids and gases, how light affects matter, the structure of matter and organic matter – while the latter looks to allow visitors to make and do things on given topics from computer science to robotics.

"With the Nature of Things gallery, our thoughts were that lots of the modern world is built around immaterial things so we wanted to focus on the world through its physical qualities," said Schaeken.

"The concept we had at the beginning for World View, however, was kind of an atelier. We wanted a learning centre-cum-makers centre. We assembled this with stand-alone, hands-on exhibits and then designed a yellow snake that connects them all throughout the gallery."

Experimenta expects around 250,000 visitors through its doors annually and will put on over 275 exhibits in its galleries. Its studios were designed by Erlangen company Jochen Hunger Museum Exhibition Design and were produced by Nürnberg-based Ligneolus.

Experimenta opened on 31 March 2019 and is open weekdays between 9 am and 5 pm and weekends and public holidays between 10 am and 6 pm.